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Monday, April 23, 2012

Un-Walk-Away-Able

A woman in my book club claims she has finished every book she has ever started. It's a personality tick of hers. She has to know what happens. It doesn't matter how bad the writing is or how uninteresting the story, she will slog through hundreds of tedious pages until she gets to the very end.

I must confess: I don't have that type of dedication. If a book doesn't grab me within the first four or five chapters—okay, sometimes even within the first one or two—I'm outta there. Often it has nothing to do with the quality of the writing. Sometimes I just don't like or connect with the main character early on. Sometimes the storyline just isn't my cup of tea. And, okay, sometimes it is the writing. Let's face it, we all have certain writing styles we like better than others.

I recently started a new release that came highly recommended by friends and had strong online reviews. But it was a genre I don't typically read—science fiction—and I really struggled through the first fifty pages or so. Several times I nearly walked away from the book altogether. Generally, I don't believe in sticking with a book you're not enjoying. Time is precious. We all have other things we could be doing—spending time with family, working on books of our own, reading something we actually do like. Why waste your time on a book that just isn't speaking to you?

As writers, I think we need to keep in mind that the first several chapters are crucial. A slow or uninteresting beginning or a story that takes too long to take off can be a deal breaker. I've heard some people describe a book by saying, "Well, it gets really good if you stick with it about ten chapters" or "about a hundred pages or so." In my mind, that's a problem. Because let's face it, many readers (and editors and agents) aren't going to hang around that long. And especially in middle grade, where attention spans can be a bit tenuous, a story needs to snag readers pretty quickly. This, of course, is the reasoning behind the often-heard advice that a book should start as close in time as possible to the main action of the plot, to avoid overly long beginnings or unnecessary tangents. Other good techniques for those early pages: start with a bang (or a shock), offer up a particularly colorful or intriguing or amusing character or voice, raise a mystery or question that compels the audience to read onward for answers. The goal is to create a story that the reader will find it very hard to walk away from.

Of course, sometimes I have to eat my own words. That book I was struggling through? Around page 65, it gets really good. Some characters come together who have wonderful interaction and chemistry, and the action picks up considerably. I flipped page after page and flew through the rest of the book.

20 comments:

Now we say that the first several chapters are crucial but I've read some classic fiction where nothing happens for quite some time. Sometimes I also think that it's genre specific since several genre's it seems to be okay that you build up to a story.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO comes to mind. The first 80 pages or so are almost entirely the business and personal background on Mikael Blomkvist, and the murder mystery that is the main plot of the book isn't even mentioned. (Interestingly, this opening material was almost entirely cut out of the movie.) For some of the ladies in my book club, this super-slow beginning was a deal breaker. They couldn't get past it. Others didn't mind. And yet others, advised where the real action of the story started, simply skipped the whole opening, dived straight into the murder mystery, and found that it didn't affect their enjoyment of the story. But obviously, an extended beginning hasn't hurt DRAGON TATTOO's popularity or sales.

In children's books, I think a slow or long beginning is a bit riskier, however...

I don't mind when books take a while to build. I think it comes from my love of LOTR. Sure, Tolkien could have skipped right to the part where Frodo FINALLY leaves the shire (over 100 pages in), but would it really work as well without Bilbo's Birthday Party? Without Concerning Hobbits?

I used to be very loyal to books. If I started them, I finished them. End of story.

But in the past two or three years, as I'm trying to read more and more, I've found that if it doesn't grab me within the first 50-75 pages, I have to put it down and move on. I feel bad doing it, and yes, there's a little niggling question in my head wondering how the story ends, but I have too many other books on the pile.

I'm glad you mentioned GIRL WITH A DRAGON TATTOO, Dawn. I remember being bored with the opening and asking myself what all the fuss had been about. However, if I remember correctly, ther had been a prologue about some mysterious letters that always arrived on a certain day every year, and it was that tenuous thread of a mystery that I felt compelled to follow.

I have always tried to read a book to its conclusion, but nowadays I do not always succeed. Sometimes it is the writing that fails to engage, sometimes there's not enough of a compelling narrative drive, and sometimes the characters fail to interest. As a writer, however, I do not share my opinions on these kind of books publicly. You'll read no scathing reviews by me, just silence.

Hi Dawn! Nice meeting you at the Spring Spirit! I hated Girl with a Dragon Tattoo because of that opening. I had been looking forward to reading it, so I saved it for a long flight, and then was stuck with nothing else to read. I did have a good experience with sticking with Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson, though--reading his books is the closest thing to what writing feels like in my brain. It felt like it was creating entire new neural pathways.

I'm definitely much tougher on children's books (MG and YA) about whether it grabs me right away. But I think that's reasonable, since these books are held to a different standard of pacing than adult books.

Yes, I had a tough time with the beginning of DRAGON TATTOO. I think the only thing that kept me reading was the encouragement of a couple of my fellow book club members. They had reached the later chapters and *promised* the rest of us that the story got much better once the murder mystery hit--and it did, but honestly, if I hadn't been reading the book in conjunction with my book club, I doubt I would have stuck with it that far.

I give a book 20-30 pages, and move on if not hooked, regardless of the author. I usually am more trusting if it's an author I love, but still need the first 20-30 to take me away. For example, I am a huge Eoin Colfer fan. Not just his ARTEMIS FOWL books, but I loved SUPERNATURALISTS and HALF-MOON too. However, he wrote a book called AIRMAN, which, to me, was way too slow at the outset. I closed it and gave up after about 30 pages. I think I picked up an ARTEMIS book in its stead.

I'm much more impatient now than I used to be, just because there are so many great books out there I want to read. If I'm not hooked by about page 30, I stop an move on to something else. The number of something elses just multiply like rabbits around my desk, so it's easy for me to move on. If I didn't have so many other books around, I might stick with one longer.

Personally, I haven't read as much as I really need to, some of that is pure envy on my part, but also because I've been struggling to find a new story for me to write, and that's really getting to me.

Lately though, books I don't finish are often by authors I feel pressured to read. Or they can hit too close to home for me emotionally.

I do think we make too much of length in general. It really comes down to how much we like a specific book. Author preference certainly plays a part as mentioned above.

If we like a book, we're more likely to finish it, and enjoy doing so, and therefore doesn't feel like torture, and I'm speaking to pleasure reading here.

The books we had to read for school or some workshop require a different mindset, at least for us non-academics, like me.

There are short books that read dense, and books with high page counts, but read briskly. We shouldn't use length alone as a yardstick for quality. We'd make ourselves crazy that way, from the writer's perspective, I mean.

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The authors of Project Mayhem do their best to provide accurate, witty, and sometimes manic information pertaining to all things middle grade. Any resemblance to anybody else's manic, witty, and accurate information is purely serendipitous. However, the views and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the individual authors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the other writers on this blog. Except, we all agree that reading Project Mayhem will brighten your day. Drop by mic.